If your iPhone battery struggles to make it through a full day, and you don’t want to add an ugly hump to your device, Guardian tech writer Samuel Gibbs has found that deleting the Facebook app and using Safari instead can boost battery life by up to 15%.

Gibbs spent a week comparing battery usage when using the app against a week using Facebook’s mobile site in Safari, finding that he averaged 15% more remaining battery life at the end of each day. He recruited a bunch of others to repeat the experiment, with similar results reported.

A simple tip means that you don’t even sacrifice much convenience by doing so …

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Gibbs created a Safari shortcut for Facebook to place on his homescreen in place of the app, retaining the convenience of one-tap access to the service.

You can even place a shortcut to Facebook in Safari on the homescreen that looks almost identical to the app’s icon (the white is a little less bright but you need eagle eyes to see). The only restriction was the Share-to function, which does not exist for websites, meaning that to share photos I had to manually hit the “post photos” button on the mobile site.

Battery usage by the Facebook app ran amok last year even when sleeping, an issue the company later resolved, but the app remains one of the biggest battery drains, and this experiment shows just how much difference it can make.

About the Author

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels published to date, and an SF novella series coming in March 2017.

Web apps are often better than native apps, as most app developers these days are more interested in pushing ads and gaining access to precise user location and contacts data than in providing enhanced functionality.

GMail, Facebook, WeatherMan, and many others are much more reliable and flexible than their app-based counterparts.

“Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life. Facebook doesn’t run GPS in the background unless you give us permission by turning on optional features that require this.”

One thing I don’t understand is why their app in iTunes shows it’s 171MB while viewing the app in a browser it says it’s 111MB.

I’ll second those findings. I removed the FB app in an effort to spend less time in there (it worked, now I’m down to about 10 mins a day, tops, compared to about 40 previously) and battery life did improve. I’ve left the FB Messenger app installed, however, for practical reasons.

Did you even read the article. It clearly states they continued to use FB, but switched to the Safari version and saw an average of 15% increased battery life. I’ve done this a while ago and saw even better battery results (~20%). I don’t go on it much (once or twice a day), and any app that gives you a 20% battery hit from being launched once or twice is poorly designed.

is there any way to switch which “profile” you are liking or posting from inside the actual app? i help manage a company page and i always need to use the web app for this because there is an easy way to switch profiles that i’m not able to find inside the actual app.

also i’ve definitely noticed killing the app after using it dramatically improves battery life.

I have background everything turned off for Facebook and it STILL takes up more background time than foreground time. I have taken to forcibly killing the FB app. Unfortunately I need the app for other reasons but it’s obvious the app still does background work even when it’s told not to.

I think the Facebook app sucks!
And it’s laughable that such a big company who’s sole purpose is social media can’t do the one thing there supposed to be good at!

However with that being said, I think the one that shuld be blamed is Apple, let be frank with each other, apples guarded rose garden that is AppStore shuld not bend for a company like Facebook. Reason is everyone has Facebook on their phone, who do you blaim when your battery dies? Facebook? Or the lousy iPhone with its stupid battery life!

If apple required a higher level of efficiency from.facebook they would fix it, they can’t afford to loose customers, neither can apple. Everyone benefits.

Personally, deleting the Facebook App was the best thing I ever did to improve battery life. I deleted the Facebook app back in October when I discovered that it was using up to 85% if my battery life in an average day and I went from needing to charge my phone by mid afternoon to now finishing out the day with 50-60% remaining. I’ll admit that this was from the time that FB admitted that the app had a battery eating bug, and since deleting it I probably don’t peruse FB quite as much (although I still use it through the web app, and I likely still have the same amount of screen on time, just perusing news and tech sites instead). Definitely no regrets and it will take a lot to convince me to put that garbage battery draining app back on any of my devices.

Also, the silly Facebook app is 109 MB, I have full featured games with quality graphics that come in under that.. What the hell are they doing? The damn thing doesn’t even handle messages… you have to have their other app for that!!